Monday, May 14, 2012

Want

(In response to the question I posed at the close of the previous entry):

I want my sister Lorraine to stand up and go to Ireland with me and the rest of my sisters — the trip long-planned and then abandoned last May in the wake of my disintegrated marriage. I want the tumor-fractured discs in her back to fuse so we can wrestle for the front seat of the rental car, and then collapse into laughter. I want to walk the beach at Keem on a blustery sunny Irish afternoon. I want to share a pint at the Minaun Heights pub, where the jar on the counter for political contributions is never quite filled enough. I want her competing with me to scale Croagh Patrick, the summit of which I've never reached. I want every shop owner to look at the five of us and ask, "sisters?"

Roy's Hauling can't deliver this.

I want my friend Connie back at work. I want her stomach back, where it belongs. I want a bite of her scone, or posole, or whatever homemade marvel she brings for lunch. (Just one bite.) I want to hear about her travels to the Czech Republic when it was Czechoslovakia. I want to hear about her Whidbey Island property, about her daughter's Brooklyn apartment. I want to hear about all three of her cats.

Again: no Roy's Hauling.

I want my friend Carol back, right now, so I can share this Piesporter Michelsberg wine with her and tell her about all these things I want but seem so completely impossible. I want her advice on so many things....

I want someone to talk to — every night — when I get home from work.

Oh Roy, you are a wonder, but there are things that, no matter how much I ask the universe, there is no chance that I'll encounter any of them on the sidewalk in front of your house.

4 comments:

I would keep asking. Maybe within that is a state of peace, how to endure what is not. From the sound of Roy, while he may not be able to manifest any of those specific wishes, he is far from running out of tricks. The true magicians are not always easy to spot. xo

"What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. . . . "—Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse"Like other poets, I am often asked if I have a spiritual practice. Yes, writing is my spiritual practice."— Alicia Ostriker

"The trick, Gloria thought as she experienced near-whiplash at the revelation, was to keep the level of believing in magic constant."—Marylinn Kelly

"Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me."—Sigmund Freud

"...and following the wrong god home we may miss our star."—William Stafford

"I am in love with the world.""—Maurice Sendak

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.” —Rainier Maria Rilke"Writing means revealing oneself to excess."--Franz Kafka"There isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails. " --Raymond Carver"Someone I loved once gave mea box full of darkness.It took me years to understandthat this, too, was a gift. "--Mary Oliver"In the middle of the journey of our lifeI found myself in a dark wood,For I had lost the right path.And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars." --Dante Alighieri